I'd be okay providing those documents to the government. I'm not okay providing those documents to a third-party for-profit company.

This is exactly my problem. No one should be required to hand over their personal data to a private company in order to access government benefits. If the government wants to verify my ID fine, but that data should never go to anyone else or be used for profit.

I Finland we essentially have third-parties providing strong single sign on verification.

This is just verification though, all the communication goes directly to government after it...

Might require issuing some type of new ID number for each citizen, but once that is in place it would massively simplify all the processes.

Exactly the same thing that's been happening across all Europe I guess, in Italy we call it SPID (digital identity public system). Once you give them your ID and you're certified, you can access ANY public office or system via that ID. I love it.

Yes, but you see Europe has functional privacy and consumer protections laws. The USA has functional legalized highway robbery as long as it's done by corporations laws.

> submit photos of oneself

Clearly you haven't used system like this - it's pretty sophisticated sequence of light flashes to manages to somehow fingerprint that you'r not faking it.

Used it in few systems for years and it works great. One of them scanned my passport via NFC, another one just asked my details (name, DOB).